


When the sun hits

by HelveticaBrown



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Discussions of Hook (but he's dead), F/F, References to Emotional Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 03:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7741672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelveticaBrown/pseuds/HelveticaBrown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Swan Queen Week Day 1 (Confessions) & Day 3 (Insecurities)</p>
<p>In the aftermath of their return from the Underworld and Hook's death, Emma and Regina have a long overdue conversation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the sun hits

**Author's Note:**

> This probably only loosely qualifies for the domesticity theme, but there's a roast in the oven, and really, what's more domestic than that? 
> 
> Technically, this is post 5b, although I haven't stuck particularly close to canon. For one, Robin stayed in New York and raised his cute hobbit-child with not-fridged Marion. And there's no split queen. 
> 
> Fair warning for anyone one who either really likes Hook or really, really can't bear to see him mentioned even once - this is probably not the fic for you, although I can promise that Hook isn't presented in a particularly kind light. Also, he's very, very dead.
> 
> Also, there are some allusions to emotional abuse and Regina has some thoughts about her own past experiences, so if that's something you can't read, you might want to exit here

* * *

There’s a roast drying out in the oven and the vegetables are cold. Henry’s rooting around in the fridge behind her and she starts to tell him off. He emerges a moment later with the makings of some monstrosity of a sandwich and shrugs apologetically.

“Growing boy. Need to eat,” he says, his speech sparse and monotonous in the manner of teenage boys the world around. And he’s right, he is a growing boy. It seems like every night he goes to sleep and wakes up an inch taller and she absently notes that his ankles are showing below the cuff of his jeans yet again. She doesn’t quite know where the time has gone.

She glances at the clock again and a whole two minutes have passed since she last checked the time. Emma was supposed to be here an hour ago.

Regina picks up her phone. “I might try calling her once more.” She knows it won’t work – it’ll just go to voicemail, or Emma will reject the call – but she tries anyway. It’s the fifth time in a row Emma hasn’t shown up for dinner, but she still has hope, still considers it a standing invitation and always prepares something she knows Emma will enjoy.

Voicemail, this time. She leaves a message.

“She’s not coming.” Henry’s voice pops, and Regina can’t help but see the flash of hurt in his eyes. She feels a flicker of anger at the thought of anyone hurting her little prince, a flicker of anger at Emma that she quickly clamps down on. She’s been trying to give Emma the space she needs – they all have – but maybe they’re being too patient with her. Henry hasn’t said as much, but Regina suspects Emma’s been avoiding him too.

In the days and weeks after they’d returned from the Underworld and finally laid Hook to rest, Emma had suddenly been a lot more present than she’d been in a long time. She’d been brightly, falsely cheerful, a jarring contrast after the grim, washed out grey of the Underworld and the weeks before when she’d been fighting the darkness. It was like watching a war film shot in technicolour, and the wrongness of it all made Regina’s head hurt.

Now, she’s wishing for those days back, as wrong as they were. At least Emma had been there, surrounded by family, and even if she wasn’t okay yet at least she could be certain that she was safe and maybe someday she would be.

She takes the roast out of the oven and puts it on the stovetop, before turning to Henry. “You should eat. I’m going to find her, going to try and talk to her.”

He reaches past her and tears a drumstick off the roast chicken with his free hand and she can’t bring herself to call out his bad manners. He takes a bite of the chicken and chews aggressively, his mouth still partly full when he says, “She won’t talk, Mom. She won’t talk to me, she won’t talk to you, she won’t talk to anyone.”

“I’m going to try anyway.” She has to. For him, for herself, for Emma, for this strange extended family they’ve all found themselves a part of.

He shrugs and heads out of the kitchen, sandwich in one hand, drumstick in the other. She watches him leave and then sends out a tendril of magic in search of Emma.

*****

Her eyes slowly adjust to the dim moonlight barely reaching the bottom of the mineshaft. She’s glad it’s summer and the nights aren’t too cool yet, although not much of the warmth seems to make it this far down. Emma’s sitting in the shadows, a bottle in her hand, and she doesn’t even really acknowledge Regina’s presence, just takes another swig.

“Hey,” she says. “We saved dinner for you, if you want to come and eat.” She’s met with silence. “Nice place you’ve got here.” More silence.

Not knowing what else to do, she sits down beside Emma, back against the wall. “Do you have enough to share?”

There’s no response, other than the weight of the bottle now in her hand. She takes a sip, grimacing a little at the sickly taste of vanilla and molasses. _Rum_. Cheap rum at that. She clamps down on her distaste and drinks again before handing the bottle back to Emma.

“How’d you know I was here?” Emma asks, but it sounds more like a formality than a genuine enquiry.

“I felt your magic.”

“Figured no one would find me down here. Should have realised you wouldn’t know when to leave things alone.” Emma’s voice is casual, but the words sting and Regina tries not to show it.

Her voice is soft, gentle, as she says, “I just wanted to talk to you, make sure you’re okay. I’m worried about you and Henry… Henry’s worried and it hurts him more and more every time you push him away.”

That connects, at least, because a moment later there’s a rueful apology. “I’m sorry about Henry.” Then, audible frustration. “I just don’t know how to be around people right now.”

“He’s not just people, Emma, he’s family. And we… your family understands that you’re hurting right now, but this isn’t the way.”

Emma doesn’t respond, just hands her the bottle again.

They trade the bottle back and forth for a while and silence reigns. Regina thinks about saying something else, but she senses it’s not the right time. So she drinks. The liquid level in the bottle is steadily dropping and she wonders how Emma is still upright. Wonders how much longer she will be.

“I should feel sad that he’s gone,” Emma volunteers, after a while, the sound of her voice faintly shocking after so much silence.

“You don’t?” Regina can’t keep the surprise from creeping into her voice, and she looks over at Emma, worried she’s said the wrong thing and that Emma will shut down again. Instead, it seems like Emma hasn’t heard her; she’s staring off into the distance and she continues like Regina never spoke. Regina puts the bottle down and watches Emma.

“I keep expecting to, _trying_ to feel sad, but I don’t. I feel… relieved,” Emma says after a long pause, and it seems like she’s not even talking to Regina. Emma finally turns to her and there’s a wild, desperate look in her eyes and Regina doesn’t quite know how to respond. “I don’t miss him. Not like I should. How fucked up is that?”

“Everyone grieves differently, Emma. It doesn’t say anything about who you are or…”

“Really?” Emma’s voice is rough as she interrupts. “I think it does.”

“Believe me, it doesn’t.” She hesitates for a moment, not sure whether to ask, but eventually she does. “Did you love him?”

Emma’s silent for a long while. Finally, “I told him I did.” It’s not an answer. Not really. But it says enough.

“So why…” Regina’s not even sure what she’s asking, and she doesn’t finish her question, but Emma answers anyway.

“He chose me. He chose me and he kept on choosing me, even when I pushed him away, even when I wasn’t good enough.” She says it quietly, matter-of-factly, and Regina’s heart breaks for the girl Emma was and the woman she is now.

“Were you happy with him?”

“Maybe. Sometimes. I don’t know. A lot of the time I just felt guilty, somehow, and most of the time I didn’t even know why.”

Sitting here now, listening to Emma, Regina can’t help but wonder if there was something more she could have done. If she could have been more present, more supportive, more _something_ just to help Emma see that she had options, had a way out. “That’s not how it’s supposed to be, Emma. The good should vastly outweigh the bad and if it doesn’t, there’s something wrong.”

“I _do_ know that. Somehow I think I always knew that,” she says. And then, her voice ever so soft, “But who else would choose me?”

“Oh, Emma.” Regina shifts over awkwardly, knocking over the bottle by their feet. The remnants of the rum trickle out onto the ground and she thinks it’s probably not a bad thing. She hesitates for a moment before wrapping an arm around Emma’s shoulders; Emma stiffens beside her before finally relaxing into the embrace. “Emma, you deserve all the happiness in the world and I wish you could see that,” Regina says, her voice soft and sad.

They don’t do this – hug, that is – even after all this time. If Regina’s honest with herself, she knows why. She knows why she restricts herself to a brief hand on the arm or in the small of Emma’s back, never for long and not too often. She knows, has always known, if she didn’t hold back, if she took Emma in her arms, buried her nose in the scent of conditioner in soft, golden curls, lost herself in the creak of leather and the feel of strong arms, she knows she wouldn’t want to let go, wouldn’t ever want to come back up for air.

She wants to answer Emma’s question, wants to shout out that she would choose her a thousand times in a thousand different worlds, but she doesn’t. This isn’t the right time to speak; she’s not sure there ever will be a right time. Instead she just pulls Emma a little closer. They stay like that for a while, not speaking, and Regina focuses on the rhythmic sound of Emma’s breathing and the press of her against her side.

Emma’s the first to break the silence. “You never really liked him, did you?”

Regina shakes her head. There’s no point pretending otherwise, because she’d never really tried to hide it. She’d shown up to Hook’s funeral, as had half the town, not for Hook but for Emma. She’d followed Emma halfway to hell and back, just to try and save a man she despised. She’d do it again if she thought it would make Emma happy, even though she never thought he was good enough for her. But then again, neither is she.

“Why?”

She chooses her words carefully. “There was too much history between us. The kind that’s hard to get past.” That’s true enough; she still has nightmares sometimes about restraints around her wrists and electricity arcing through her body and Hook’s smugness just before he walked away. Sometimes the nightmares blend into older ones of vines wrapped crushingly tight and not being able to breathe or look down at the ground so far below. It’s reason enough not to have liked him.

There’s more, though. More that she can’t share with Emma. Not right now. Maybe never.

“So why’d you come to the Underworld to save him?”

“For you, of course. All of us, we did it for you.”

Emma seems to weigh this up for a moment, but when she speaks again it feels like they’re having two different conversations at once and Regina’s not sure where they’re going. “He didn’t like you either, you know. Didn’t like me spending time with you. I asked him why, once.”

“What did he say?” She struggles to keep the distaste from her voice. She doesn’t like talking about Hook, doesn’t like thinking about him and she’s already exhausted her tolerance for the subject. This is about Emma, though, so she forces herself to keep going.

“He didn’t answer. Just threw a bottle at the wall and stormed out. He stayed on the Jolly Roger and didn’t talk to me for two days after that.”

Regina can feel the way Emma shrinks in on herself, her shoulders hunched, and she can’t help the way her spine stiffens in fury, can’t help the way she clenches her jaw. She wishes they’d succeeded in bringing Hook back, just so she could tear him apart right now for his part in making Emma feel so small, so cowed, so unlike the Emma who’d first come to Storybrooke and turned her world upside down.

“He shouldn’t have treated you like that.” Her voice cracks a little, and she pushes down memories of a young queen wearing a cold and heavy crown.

“He told me, though. Much later, one night when he’d had too much to drink. He said he didn’t like the way you looked at me, that if you were a man he’d have challenged you to a duel and buried his sword in your heart.”

Emma slides out from under her arm and Regina feels her throat tighten at the thought of her feelings laid bare like this, unreturned, unwanted. She can’t quite bring herself to look at Emma, isn’t ready to see the rejection in her eyes. She looks down at her hands instead, wills herself to keep them still.

“Was he right?” Emma asks. Regina tries to form a response, but she’s caught between a denial and an apology, a promise that she won’t make things difficult. She eventually forces herself to lift her gaze and face the truth, but she’s taken by surprise and the response dies on her lips.

Emma’s looking at her now and Regina’s not sure, but there’s something in her face that might be hope. And she begins to wonder if maybe she was wrong, that maybe it was the right time to speak, maybe it had been a long time ago and she just hadn’t realised.

She swallows down the lump in her throat, forces herself to speak. There’s no point in lying, because even if Emma didn’t have her superpower, she thinks that right now her face probably reads like a book.

“Yes.”

She watches Emma carefully, dreadful anticipation clawing at her chest, sees the slowly-dawning wonder in Emma’s eyes and feels a surge of relief.

“I wish I’d known, wish I’d asked you sooner,” Emma murmurs, and then she’s leaning in, cupping Regina’s cheek in her hand and she sighs as Emma’s lips find hers. They’re both a little clumsy from the liquor and it probably shouldn’t feel this good, this perfect, to be kissing Emma Swan at the bottom of a cold and dirty mineshaft, but it does and she never wants to come up for air.

Eventually they have to, though, and Emma’s the first to pull away. “I don’t know how much I’m ready for,” she says, her voice hesitant.

Regina feels a surge of protectiveness and she reaches out and takes Emma’s hand, cups it gently in between her own. “Of course. We can go as slow as you want. No obligations, no expectations, just whatever you need.”

Emma smiles and to Regina’s eyes it’s like the sun’s coming out of an eclipse and she can feel her eyes tear up a little at the unexpected brightness. It’s barely been any time at all, but it feels like Emma’s been lost in the shadows for far too long. Maybe now, though, there’s hope.


End file.
